I am Lieutenant Commander Upendra Prasad. Born on 30th Jun 1988 in Jamshedpur, Jharkhand. Born and brought up in a typical small town household. I was a typical ectomorph.…
From the original icanbefitter.com archive (2019), lightly edited for the new site. — Upen
Bonjour,
I am Lieutenant Commander Upendra Prasad. Born on 30th Jun 1988 in Jamshedpur, Jharkhand. Born and brought up in a typical small town household. I was a typical ectomorph. Selective and choosy food patterns along with pathetic hostel food for four years of engineering life had made me skinny fat.
The picture in brown blazer was taken when I was in school (Standard XII, 2006). Because till school I was staying with my parents, so my health was okay. Post school, I went to college for pursuing my engineering. The right picture was taken in the final year of college (2009-10).
Then I became a marine. Joined Indian Navy (July 2010). Suffered a multiple fracture in right tibia during training period (you can see the bone bump on my right leg’s tibia). That’s when reality hit me hard. My body didn’t or rather couldn’t take the rigorous training because I had abused it enough in college time. Doctors had told me not to play games which included running of any sort. So although I had started jogging, and my leg was recovering well (Thanks to the amazing Doctors), I still had around 6 months before next follow-up. Blessing in disguise was, doctors recommended swimming which would be kind of therapy for the leg.
Moreover I started lifting weights. The same doctors advised me not to increase weight as it would lead to unnecessary pressure on the still recovering bone (I still have a plate in my leg by the way).
Left pic is of my 24th B'day, and right one was captured a year later.
I had started running slowly. I was kept in Low medical category as I couldn’t still complete the Physical test of my service. However I was able to learn all four strokes of swimming, and I started gaining weight and I was feeling good. People and Friends, who once told “Why do you waste your time in Gym? Ho to kuch nai raha hai ! Bus protein me paise phooke ja rahe ho…” were a bit quiet nowadays. I started to read a lot about fitness, eat a lot, think a lot. But, I was still an unguided missile. I didn’t had proper knowledge of What to do? How to do? Where to start. So I was basically following what my gym buddy was saying, not understanding that what worked for him might not work for me.
Eating without understanding made me go bulky which eventually started affecting my other activities like swimming and running. The left picture is of 2013, and the right, end of 2014. I had started to get a hang of things but still I was unaware about the power of Goal oriented nutrition and targeted workout plans. (I learnt about preparing diet chart and its importance in Mar 2018.) But I started controlling my diet in general. I started to cut down junk food in an incremental way. I still believe eating clean is the deciding factor in achieving a desired physique.
You can scroll over the images to see the dates on which they were clicked (I got these pics with dates from my FB account: Upendra Prasad — you can check it out for my other pics, and my FB page MyFitnessJourney for an awesome dose of healthy motivation). Though I was seeing positive results, as my pictures say I wasn’t entirely in control. For gaining weight I over ate, for losing weight I under ate. That’s it, and I was trying to eat clean.
One thing which I did consistently was going to gym 5-6 days per week, every month, every year, barring holidays. I kept on reading fitness articles, blogs, books, ebooks, talked with various fitness enthusiasts, trained with the weight lifting team of IIT Kanpur under the guidance of the weight lifting coach. I also learnt how to prepare customized goal oriented diet charts and customized workout plans. Behold, I started progressing.
The journey has just started! :)